Gruber Uncovers Obamacare "Shell Game"

Are you one of those “stupid” American voters who trusted President Obama and the Democrats in Congress to provide health insurance for 39 million uninsured Americans at no additional cost to the American people?

Do you recall President Obama saying, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future. ... Period.” (youtube.com/watch?v=NCSrP44QgZ4)

My daughter’s private medical insurance costs roughly $4,000 per year. Assume, arguendo, that the government can somehow provide comparable insurance at one-fourth of that cost. If 39 million uninsured people now have coverage under Obamacare, and each policy costs $1,000, the annual cost of providing that insurance is $39 billion.

Where is that $39 billion coming from? It can only add to the deficit, if it is borrowed. Therefore, to avoid borrowing, it must be paid in taxes. Did the president tell the American people that? Did he mention Obamacare for the uninsured would be paid for by taxes on those who had already paid for their health insurance? By taxes on some existing insurance policies? By taxes on medical devices? Or by other hidden taxes?

In October of 2013, at a panel discussion at Pennsylvania University,  Jonathan Gruber made the following remarks:

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK? So it’s written to do that.

“In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in -- you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money -- it would not have passed. OK?

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to [obfuscate to] get the thing to pass.

“Look, I wish ... we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

Who is Jonathan Gruber? In November 2014, here is who President Obama said he is: “some adviser who never worked on our staff [who] expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with.”

But was the president being any more honest here than he was when he said the country could insure 39 million people without increasing the deficit? Was he intentionally understating Gruber’s influence on Obamacare  to distance himself from Professor Gruber --— just as he had earlier distanced himself from his pastor of 20 years, the Rev. Wright?

Here are the president’s 2006 remarks before the Brookings Institute: “You have already drawn some of the brightest minds from academia and policy circles. Many of them I have stolen ideas from liberally, ... [including] Jon Gruber.”

According to the Tampa Bay Times fact-check article, “Gruber visited the White House a dozen times from 2009-10, according to visitor logs. This included a July 20, 2009, meeting with Obama.

“According to a 2011 NBC news story, Obama or his staff sat down a dozen times during 2009 with three different people who helped advise Romney’s health care overhaul in Massachusetts, including Gruber.

“‘The White House wanted to lean a lot on what we’d done in Massachusetts,’ Gruber told NBC News in 2011.  ‘They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.’

“Gruber also had meetings with many of the heavyweights on Obama’s economic and health care staff: Peter Orszag, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget; Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council; Jason Furman, the deputy director of the National Economic Council; and Jeanne Lambrew, the director of the Office of Health Reform for the Department of Health and Human Services.”

The Tampa Bay Times concludes that Mr. Obama’s Novemeber 2014 dismissive remarks about Gruber as, “some adviser who never worked on our staff,” were mostly false.

“By HHS’ own documentation, Gruber was considered ‘uniquely positioned’ for a contract job assisting with Obama’s health care reform efforts. ... [H]e was a very important adviser.

“Further, while Gruber never worked ‘’on our staff,’’ he was paid by the federal government quite handsomely, and worked very closely with the staff. ... He also met with Obama in the White House and had a dozen meetings that often included some of the most senior members of Obama’s economic and health care teams.”

Telling the American people that we can provide free insurance for 39 million uninsured people without adding  “one dime to our deficits” was a half-truth -- as well as a half-lie. It was bait-and-switch. Slight-of-hand. The president’s remarks were made to gain the support of gullible Americans too “stupid (Gruber’s words!) to realize there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The president gulled the gullible by focusing the attention of Gruber’s stupid Americans on the pea -- the deficit -- while concealing tax increases under the shells.

Gruber is being honest when he says. “This bill was written in a tortured” way to make sure the CBO didn’t score taxes as taxes. And Gruber was being honest when stated that if “you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money -- it would not have passed.”

Are you one of Gruber’s stupid American voters who trusted  President Obama and the Democrats in Congress to provide health insurance for 39 million uninsured Americans a no additional cost to the American people?

And by the way: the CBO in October of 2014 revised its forecast saying that Obamacare will increase the deficit by $100 billion over the next decade!

Posted: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 12:00 am

By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015 John Donald O'Shea 

Nation Cannot Afford Return to the "Blood Feud"

We have a judicial system in America. It was fashioned and put in place by men conversant with Greek, Roman, Germanic and Canon law -- men who preferred the English common law to the Inquisition. Men who made a deliberate choice that the jury system was the best system developed over 2,500 years to safeguard the liberties of the individual.

Now a segment of our society claims to have no faith in our system of justice and resorts to mob rule.

The mobs in Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere are still furious. They refuse to accept grand jury refusals to indict police officers in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. The protesters instead have made up their own minds that the officers acted without justification and that the grand juries involved were corrupt.

Some demand that Attorney General Eric Holder and his U.S. Justice Department intervene and prosecute the officers involved for Civil Rights violations  -- even if the evidence indicates no racial motivation. Other “peaceful protesters” -- in the course of their “peaceful” protests --  have burgled, looted and burned the business properties of their entirely innocent neighbors in Ferguson. Still others have cluttered the streets of New York, chanting “What do we want? Dead cops!”

Here is a summary of the evidence the grand jury heard the Brown case (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown):

“Wilson’s DNA ... was found on Brown’s left palm. Brown’s DNA was found on the left thigh of Wilson’s pants, on the [officer’s] gun, and on the inside driver’s door handle of Wilson’s police SUV, the result of Brown’s blood spilled staining Wilson’s pants and the door handle. ...

“Documents released after the grand jury proceedings show that Wilson washed blood from his hands and checked his own gun into an evidence bag. ...

“Dr. Michael Graham, the St. Louis medical examiner, said blood was found on Wilson’s gun and inside the car, and tissue from Brown was found on the exterior of the driver’s side of Wilson’s vehicle, both of which were consistent with a struggle at that location.

“According to Judy Melinek, a San Franciscan pathologist, the official autopsy, which stated Brown’s hand had foreign matter consistent with a gun discharge on it, supported Wilson’s testimony that Brown was reaching for the weapon, or indicating the gun was inches away from Brown’s hand when it went off.

Three autopsies were performed on Brown’s body, with all three noting that Brown had been shot at least six times, including twice in the head, with no shots in his back.”

Imagine if police officers reacted the same way. Recently two New York City policemen were murdered, while sitting in their squad cars. Assume that their murderer, rather than committing suicide, had been arrested, tried and found not guilty. Would the N.Y. police have been justified in looting and burning neighborhood  businesses? Would you approve their marching and chanting, “What do we want? Dead criminals!”

A day doesn’t go by when a policeman isn’t required to break up a bar fight. And while the police are rarely killed dealing with drunks, the officers are frequently hurt. Often seriously. In most cases the assailant is arrested, charged with aggravated battery and prosecuted. But what happens when the police believe the defendant deserves prison time, and the judge imposes probation? The injured officer and his coworkers may not feel that “justice” was done. But they certainly don’t burn down neighborhoods, loot buildings and call for the killing of the thug who got probation.

In America, believe it or not, you do not have a constitutional right to loot liquor stores. You do not have a right to burn businesses because you perceive that you have been the victim of past injustice.

In Greece, 2,500 years ago, the Greek playwright Aeschyluis wrote tragedies. His play “The Eumenides,” deals with two very different systems of justice. The Goddess Athena has brought to the city of Athens a new system of criminal justice.

Under her new system the defendant’s guilt or innocence is determined by a jury of 12. Orestes, who has killed his mother because she had murdered his father, flees to Athens to escape the revenge of the “Furies.”

The Furies (aka, “The Erinyes”) --— the more ancient gods -- pursue Orestes to Athens. Under their more ancient law, the Furies, demand “blood for blood;” Orestes, the matricide, must pay for his mother’s blood with his own. When the jury splits, six for conviction, and six for acquittal, and when Athena herself breaks the deadlock, casting the deciding vote for acquittal, the Furies are outraged, and rage:

“Gods of the younger generation, you have ridden down the laws of the elder time, torn them out of my hands. I, disinherited, suffering, heavy with anger shall let loose on the land the vindictive poison dripping deadly out of my heart upon the ground; this from itself shall breed cancer.”

Our justice system is not perfect. Nothing human is. But it’s the best Americans have been able to devise. As Justice  Oliver Wendell Holmes states in “The Common Law,” “The earliest forms of legal procedure were grounded in vengeance. ... Roman Law started from the blood feud .... German law began that way.”

Justice Holmes states that Roman and Germanic law sought an alternative, the “composition”  -- that is, “damages” -- paid to buy-off the blood feud.

America has a choice. It can seek justice within our system of justice, or it can return to the vengeance of the blood feud --  the vengeance  of the Furies.

But recall: our system provides not only criminal remedies, but civil remedies for money damages, as well. The next of kin of Brown and Garner can sue for wrongful death and seek money damages. And if they do, they only have to prove that it is more likely than not that the officers involved used excessive force. If the physical evidence and witnesses do indeed support their claims, winning should be easy.

If not, then their only remedy appears to be to ignore the facts and howl for vengeance.

Posted: Saturday, January 10, 2015 12:00 am
By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015 John Donald O'Shea

Why Didn't Police Use Deadly Force to Stop Looting?

Have you wondered why the police did nothing to stop the arson, burglary and looting of the mob in Ferguson, Mo? Have you wondered why police did not use deadly force to suppress the riots there?

Under the English common law, police were authorized to use deadly force to prevent the commission of a felony, or prevent the escape of a person who had committed the felony. At the same time, under the common law, deadly force could not be used against misdemeanants, except in the case of riot, but even then only after the rioters had been ordered to disperse.

This is why when Major John Pitcairn upon reaching Lexington (April 1775) and finding the colonials, in what he perceived to be an “unlawful armed assembly,” ordered the colonials assembled  to "Lay down your arms, you ... rebels, and disperse!” He was “reading them the riot act.”

But in England before the American Revolution, almost all felonies were punishable by death. That obviously is no longer the case. In Illinois today, for example, crimes such as theft, burglary and robbery no longer carry the death penalty, and are generally punished by imprisonment or by some form of probation.

The leading case on use of deadly force by a police officer is the U.S. Supreme Court's Tennessee v. Garner (1985). In that case, a Memphis police officer, responding to a burglary call, ordered the fleeing suspect to halt. When the suspect ignored the command and continued his flight, the officer shot and killed him.

The officer used deadly force despite being "reasonably sure" the suspect was an unarmed 17- or 18- year-old of slight build. Tennessee v. Garner was a civil case for damages brought by the father of the boy shot by the officer.

The Tennessee statute in question provided that "if, after notice of the intention to arrest (has been communicated by the officer), the defendant either flees or forcibly resists arrest, the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest."

The Supreme Court first held that using deadly force to prevent escape implicates the Fourth Amendment. That Amendment provides the American people with the right “to be secure in their persons against unreasonable seizures. The court then explained:

"Whenever an officer restrains the freedom of a person to walk away, he has seized that person. ... There can be no question that apprehension by the use of deadly force is a seizure subject to the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment."

Based on that logic, the court next limited the police officers right to use deadly force, holding: “If the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used if necessary to prevent escape, and if, where feasible, some warning has been given.”

Given that holding, the reason rioters were allowed to run amok in Ferguson is obvious.

Rioters shown in the news videos were not “threatening police officers with weapons.” And unless there were people present in the businesses being looted and burned, looting and arson did not  “involve the infliction or threaten infliction of serious physical harm.” In short, deadly force would only have been justified if the police had interposed themselves between the mob and the buildings to protect the businesses, and if persons in the mob had first used or threatened deadly force against the officers.

But why put yourself in position to be killed by a mob? And if the police had responded to the mob’s use of deadly force with their own use of deadly force, even if 100 percent justified, what guarantees did the police have that the U.S. Department of Justice would not impanel a federal grand jury to investigate their violation of the mob’s civil rights?

Would the mob have been persuaded that the police officers’ response to the mob’s use of deadly force was justified? Or would the mob have chanted as the NY mobs did, “What do we want? Dead cops!” And then of course, the officers would have been sued civilly by the relatives of dead mob members for wrongful death.

So the police backed off and let the looters have at it. After all, it was only someone else’s property that was destroyed or stolen.

So, is looting and burning of businesses, and chanting “kill cops,” constitutionally protected freedom of expression? Peaceful assembly? I don’t think so. If it is, then the cops and anybody who opposes the looters should be able to chant, “kill looters,” and loot and burn down the homes of the looters.

If it’s fair for you to burn down and loot my business, why doesn’t equal protection guarantee me the right to loot and burn yours?

Posted: Saturday, January 3, 2015 12:00 am
By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015 John Donald O'Shea